Damascus
Damascus is a large city, with a very warm climate. It was built in an oasis, and has mountains around it. A lot of the greenery surrounding the city looks brown, and the area around the city looks parched. There's a dried-up river flowing into the city. There's a very clear separation between the old town of Damascus and the new. The old town is right in the middle of the city, with the original city walls around them. There's a legend that they were solid adamantine - they really only have adamantine plating, and have mostly been stripped for materials. The new city sprawls around the old one. There is a northern mercantile quarter that seems to be doing quite well, and there is a broad mix of races, including a high population of goblins and orcs. There have been sandstorms here as well. Ratchet's Ratchet's is a large goblin-run factory up on the mountain outside Damascus that is mostly controlled chaos and a frenzy of activity. The shop floor has a large amount of heavy machinery around it, and they are all processing different amounts of adamantine ore. Above the shop floor is a foreman's office, accessible from some stairs, which is goblin-sized and then resized to allow space for Azu to get in. It is located in the corner of the warehouse with floor-to-ceiling grubby windows. There are hangar doors on the main floor; through the doors are loads of crates, all packed and ready to go. The crates contain bearings. Outside the main factory are multiple hangars; two to each side of it, two to the top left, and two to the top right. There is an administration building in front of it, with an armory inside that has multiple different weapons hung on the wall. In the basement of the building, there is a large archive storage area with metal filing cabinets and paper folders - paperwork all over the place. It's also pitch black - goblins have darkvision so they do not need lights. In one of the filing cabinets, labeled 'Q', a goblin named Clapper has hidden daggers. The Desiccated Corporal This is the restaurant that Clapper sends the party to after they leave the factory. It's close to the older town of the city, and is a nice restaurant. Hot Tropics The name of the hotel that the party stay at in Damascus. It's full of dry fountains and has sand in the central courtyard. Temple of Artemis The temple of Artemis has a stone hallway leading past a banquet hall and into the holding cells in the basement. There are a few people there in a drunk tank. Crank Industries (upper factory) Crank Industries is also up in the mountains, past Ratchet's and into more rugged and rocky territory. The factory dwarfs Ratchet's; it has 12 warehouses, around double the amount of Ratchet's, and an iron perimeter fence that stretches around the entire complex. There are a number of guards on patrol. The entrance into the complex has a basic guard station. The complex is laid out almost like a clock; each of the 12 warehouses are in a circle surrounding a central admin building. There is an outcropping that stretches out toward the perimeter fence, and it is surrounded by ridges. The complex itself is dimly lit, and the warehouses are spaced out far enough apart that it's more than a quick sprint between them. There are a number of warning bells throughout the complex, each keyed to a different location. Admin Building There is a shed full of meat next to the administration building. The building itself is relatively nondescript; the entire first floor looks as though it has space for a lot of administrative staff (all of the desks, however, are covered with dust sheets and it seems as though no one has been there in a while. The second floor is similar, but has offices instead of typing desks. The entire complex itself seems as though it could hold thousands of people to work; in the admin building, everything is closed up apart from the second floor. The basement contains a number of records. Warehouses All of the warehouses are huge. There are huge hangar doors on the front, with smaller doors built into them. Around the side of the warehouses, there is a small entrance on ground level with stairs leading up to an entrance above. The ground-floor entrances along the side are locked with an alarm pressure trap, there is a small single-person cage, with a slot through which to put food and a meat trough on the other side of the bars. The warehouses are pitch black, and house thousands of simulacrum chassis and a chimaera. One of the warehouses has machines inside of it, and an aqueduct system that runs through the building. Post-glassing The complex isn't completely flat; there are small lumps where the warehouses were, and the rest is literally solid glass. The fence has been completely destroyed, and there's some steam coming from a crack in the glassy crater. The crack, once broken, leads into a sinkhole with lots of broken pipes in it. They are a variety of sizes (some big enough for Azu, some only big enough for Grizzop and Hamid). The large pipe shows a polluted liquid has gone through it, and fresh water coming out of another pipe. This is the entrance to the lower part of Crank Industries (see below). Crank Industries (lower factory) The pipe with fresh water coming out of it runs horizontally; it functions almost like an aqueduct. After a couple of miles, they find a modified watercourse; a few walkways run along the side and the ceiling is low. There is an underwater river running along throughout the cavern, which is about 30 feet across and 15 feet up. The water continues downriver and the walkway ends. There are access ladders up to the walkways. The water level seems lower than it should be, and they can see metal reinforcements in the roof of the cavern. The walkways that stretch across the river are on both sides, and cross over, with one staircase leading up. They have metal grille railings on each side and are wide enough for two people to comfortably walk across. The stairs lead up to a metal, grilled door, which has a poison trap set to it. Through the door is a long corridor that looks similar to the one they left, although without the water. Paths stretch out running relative to the river below. Upriver There are a number of traps. The first is a sinking coffin trap, which stretches the length of the corridor (someone would be caught in a small metal box and dropped into the water below with no way to escape). After, there is a small room with complex locked doors on each side. It is a small 20x20ft cube, with 5' panels stretching across the entire room. When the door on the opposite side is unlocked, the room is filled with water from 4' high pipes behind panels next to the doors, and the doors slam shut. On the other side of these doors, they see a huge cavern that looks like an underground lair. There are more walkways stretching across the cavern. There's a hole in the roof, through which a river pours into a metal funnel in the center of the cavern. Through the hole, there is an illusion, making it seem as though the river has completely dried up. The cavern itself seems as though it was built for humans by goblins. There are a few doors on the walkway around the cavern, mostly leading to storage areas. Downriver There is a curve to the corridor, with a large rune painted magically on the wall before the curve. This is a pressure trap - wizard shackle grubs fall from the ceiling as people pass. Past this trap is what seems like another one of the water-filling rooms, but no traps trigger. Beyond these doors, they hear mechanical noises and the sounds of running water. At the end of the corridor, it opens up into a large room with a number of machines and conveyor belts. There is a set of stairs leading down to the main floor with a lot of motorized arms. The conveyor belt has a number of simulacra chassis. There are four major entrances to the room. The river comes in and empties into a sluice, with a huge piping system diverting the water around. There's a long borehole nearby which the adamantine is coming from, going onto the conveyor belt and being constructed into the simulacrum chassis. The factory is empty. Temple of Hephaestus Harlequin base Meritocratic headquarters Category:Location Category:World-building